Kenya is in eastern Africa, sharing borders with Uganda, Tanzania, Southern Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, and in 1984 images of the region gripped by drought and famine shocked the world.

Unicef estimates 800,000 people died.

But while Bob Geldof was singing songs about it, Dr Koech was living through it.

"I grew up on a small family farm, less than 10 acres [four hectares] and as a young child I got the opportunity to help my parents," he said.

"Everything was small scale, we were mainly dealing with subsistence farming ... we grew food and in seasons when we had excess food we were able to sell that and turn it into money.

"We mainly depended on rain-fed agriculture, which means when there was no rain crops failed and when crops failed people didn't have money, didn't have food."

Dr Koech's family lived in a village near the world-renowned Lake Nakuru, famous for the millions of flamingos living there and the fine marathon runners it produced.

Without food from the farm, families in the region had no other opportunity to earn an income and therefore could not afford to buy food either.

"I had this passion of looking into ways of helping so that people should have other means, for example watering the farms, so that you don't have to depend on rain," he said.

"I remember that time [1984] ... lots of animals died, there were no harvests at all and that led to a lot of devastation in the region.

"Lots of my friends were not able to continue schooling because they had to go elsewhere, look for money to buy food."

Struggle inspires career

The struggle inspired Dr Koech to study agricultural science at Egerton University, at the time the best agricultural university in East Africa.

After graduation he worked as an extension officer with the government's agricultural department, but after a few years he decided to return to study.

In order to really tackle the water and soil issues farmers were facing, he set out for Australia to gain his Masters' Degree and PhD.

"I came to Australia because there are a lot of similarities between Kenya and Australia, crops, temperature and obviously the high standard of education," he said.

"I did my research at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba and I mainly focussed on farrow irrigation.

"My main interest was to try to look for ways of achieving more water use efficiency."

Taking his passion into the classroom, Dr Koech joined the lecturing staff at the Bundaberg CQUniversity campus earlier this year.

"I think Bundaberg has everything that I would want in my life," he said.

"CQU is exactly what sort of organisation I would want to work for ... the new Bachelor of Agriculture program started last year is unique.

"I don't think I'd want to move anywhere else; I want to stay here."

Running with tradition

Dr Koech has begun talking to industry groups about projects to study the intensive irrigation used in horticulture and sugar cane production.

But he still keeps in touch with his colleagues back in Kenya to regularly communicate his new findings back to his old home.

And he has also kept up one of the traditions of his childhood: marathon running.

"My late father, he was the best, he was one of the best marathon runners in the 50s," he said.

"As we were growing up he used to tell us his experiences and [show us] his medals so we grew up with that spirit.

"There is a Bundaberg park run, it's a community event ... I'm already a member of that, myself and my family go on a Saturday."

While he was a long way from eastern Africa and the village where he ran barefoot, Dr Koech said he thought Bundaberg was the perfect place to further his research and to contribute to better water efficiency worldwide.

Even before cases of strawberry sabotage crippled sales and cost the industry millions of dollars, Australian growers were despairing over dumping tonnes of perfectly good fruit that was too small or odd-shaped to find a market.